Twenty minutes later, after a ride that left him stunned by the river’s power, Blake cut sharp left and followed Marshall into a large eddy above the confluence with the Hudson.
“You okay?” Marshall said.
Blake wasn’t about to admit that he was shocked at the monster the runoff had made of the river. “I’ve got a great crew. We’re fine.”
“Don’t get too comfortable. You’ve got another three hours to go.”
Blake gave each of his clients a fistful of chocolates, tightened his foot straps, took a swig of water, and waited, his left leg shaking nervously, for the sign to move out.
Marshall leaned toward him. “There’s ice all over the river. Stay no more than ten yards behind me. I’m not sure which side of Cedar I’m going to take.”
Blake turned to his crew. “You people ready for the best two hours of your lives?”
They raised their arms and cheered.
“Okay, then, let’s get ready for some major carnage.”
One by one, the six rafts punched through the seething waters at the Confluence, cut diagonally across the swollen, ice-choked crosscurrent, and headed straight for Cedar Ledges.
Blake watched the Hudson pour into the valley from his left and overpower the Indian. For more than a minute, two rivers on a collision course fought for control of his raft.
Blake told his crew to ease up as the Hudson pushed them toward Cedar. Up ahead he saw Marshall, forced to the right to avoid a ten-by-twelve slab of pack ice, enter a narrow, rock-lined channel.
Following his boss into the chute, Blake found himself surrounded by tall pines. Rocks and chunks of ice punctured the current. The sun, pulsing through the trees above his left shoulder, blinded him momentarily. Sighting open water ahead, Blake was anxious to escape the narrow confines of a space that left him almost no room to maneuver.
He never saw the log that struck him in the soft flesh immediately below his right eye. The collision, like a sledgehammer demolishing an over-ripe melon, crushed in his cheek bone, dislodged three molars, and fractured his jaw before sending him into the Hudson. Somersaulting backward, Blake hit the water feet first and disappeared. That’s when his real troubles began.
The current carried him ten yards downstream and then, when his foot snagged something for a second, channeled him toward the back wall of a large undercut cave that the Hudson had been carving out since the Pleistocene.
He was only six feet from light and fresh air, but he might as well have been six miles. The chamber, covered in microscopically thin particles of decaying vegetation, was agate smooth. Because the river was focusing its incalculable energy on this single point, the young guide was, for all practical purposes, a hundred feet underwater.
Blake’s diligence backfired on him that morning. Five days ago, he’d blown a day’s pay on a new life vest. Its thick, rigid panels running from shoulders to hips gave the Hudson a perfect target as it pushed relentlessly against his body. The inexorable pressure enveloped his torso and inch by inch, despite his struggles, shoved him further underwater.
Holding his breath and staring up at the opaque light far above him now, Blake waited to get flushed from the cave. Having run a half-dozen recirculation drills in hydraulics, he knew that rivers could scare the hell out of you, but eventually they released you. Every time he’d done one of these exercises, he’d been told, “Keep your mouth shut and, when your turn comes, swim like hell toward the boil line.”
The river was ruthless that day. It crushed Blake’s eardrums and dislocated his elbow. It ripped off his helmet and split the gaskets of his dry suit, allowing it to fill with ice-cold water. Then it pushed him closer to the gravel-covered bottom and squeezed the air from his lungs.
While a mediocre student, a sweet goof-off really, Blake was a smart, hardworking, and responsible guide. Though raised by neglectful parents in a community crushed by poverty, he didn’t possess two tin cups worth of cynicism, mistrust, or resentment.
The river understood none of this. It did what it was designed to do. It quickly drowned him.
Nash and Carlyle, who were waiting for the rafts ahead of them to clear the chute, pulled up behind Blake’s boat thirty seconds later. “What are you all sitting here for?” Nash asked Blake’s clients.
“Our boat hit something and just stopped,” a young guy said. “When we turned around, our guide was gone.”
Just then Munck, Hernandez, and Betts slid up alongside the two other rafts. “What the hell’s going on?” Betts said.
“Blake’s disappeared.”
“We don’t have time for this bullshit,” Betts said. “Marshall’s waiting for us.”
Carlyle turned to Blake’s crew. “Was everything okay before you entered the chute?”
“He was fine,” the guy said. “We were having a great time.”
“And you could hear him giving directions?” Carlyle said.
“Yes, of course.”
Carlyle stood up in his raft. “He can’t have gone far. Hernandez, quick, walk upstream. If another outfit shows up, tell them no one comes through here until we’ve found our guide.”
“Then what?”
“Flag down a safety boater. Have him run back to the basin and alert the authorities.”
Just then Marshall, who had parked his boat downstream, emerged from the woods. “What’s going on?”
Carlyle grabbed his arm and pulled him aside. “We can’t find Blake.”
“Are you crazy?” Marshall turned to Nash. “What’s he saying?”
“Chris is gone.”
Marshall just stared at them.
Carlyle said, “Keith, go downstream. Look along the shore and in the woods. Alex, move his crew to the other boats and get them away from here.”
Nash returned three minutes later. “I can’t find him anywhere.”
Marshall said, “Come on. This makes no sense.”
“We need Search and Rescue,” Carlyle said. “There’s not much time.”
As snow dropped from overburdened pines, Marshall walked back and forth along the Hudson. “What are we looking for? Tell me now.”
Carlyle said, “Calm down. An EMT squad should be here soon.”
Just then they heard three whistle blasts. Carlyle rushed through the woods and found Betts holding onto Blake’s body. It was wedged between the bank and tree roots that curled down into the river.
Carlyle said, “Quick. Hand me a line.” Stepping carefully across the slick rocks lining the chute, he lowered himself into the current. The water swirled around his thighs, threatening to pull him under. He tied the rope to Blake’s life vest, grabbed the boy under his arms and, inch by inch, heaved him out of the water.
Nash bent over the young guide, unsnapped his life vest, and began chest compressions. “Come on,” he whispered. “Come on. Come on.” Water seeped from Blake’s mouth, but he didn’t move or breathe.
Carlyle studied his watch as Nash worked on Blake. Finally, he said, “It must be fifteen minutes since he went under. That’s enough.”
Nash, ignoring Carlyle, continued CPR for another two minutes.
“Keith. He’s gone. Stop.” Carlyle, his feet numb from the cold, put his right hand on Nash’s shoulder. “You did everything you could.” Betts picked up a paddle and began abusing a jack pine. His tirade over, he slumped to the ground.
Nash leaned away from Blake but kept his right hand on the body.
“Let me see him,” Carlyle said. He bent over and took off Blake’s helmet. The right side of the kid’s face was stove in. His eye was bloody, the teeth broken and mangled. “How the hell did this happen?”
“Who the hell cares?” Nash said. “He’s dead.”
“Give me a minute.” Carlyle trudged upstream through the forest parallel to the chute, pushing aside low-hanging limbs, for another twenty yards. The Hudson, two steps to his right, roared past him. Dead leaves and branches littered the ground. Sunlight reflecting off the river cast dark shadows on
the woods.
Had he had come too far? He stopped, scanned the ground around him, and spotted the trunk of a slender pine lying in the snow. The bottom portion of the tree hung no more than eighteen inches over the current, just enough in the confined space of the chute to have caught an unwary guide or one of his passengers.
Carlyle stared at the tree. He walked around it and kicked at the snow-covered branches. Before leaving, he grabbed one and pulled, but the sapling, frozen to the ground, would not budge.
Carlyle made his way back to Marshall and his crew. “You won’t believe this. He hit a log. Come back there with me; I’ll show you.”
“Are you nuts? We’ve got forty people sitting over there. A couple of them are hysterical. If we don’t get out of here, they’ll freeze to death. Let the authorities take care of it.”
“DEC is going to demand a full report,” Carlyle said.
“Come back tomorrow if you have to,” Nash said. “We’ve got to get everyone back to North River now.”
“Then you’ve got to wait a couple of minutes,” Carlyle said. “I need to look at the site again before we leave.”
Marshall grabbed his arm. “Get in that boat now.”
“We can’t leave that log there. What if someone else runs into it?”
“Did you hear me?” Marshall said. “Let the rangers deal with this. It’s their problem. They’ll move the goddamn tree.”
“You’re making a big mistake. This is the second death this week. Someone’s going to catch hell if we don’t do everything we can to explain what just happened.”
“I swear I’ll leave you here if you don’t get going. Now.”
Carlyle took two steps toward the log before spotting the DEC raft approaching. Dave Reed, a forest ranger, walked over to Marshall. “We’ll handle this now. Move the body into my boat, then get your people out of here.”
Two minutes later, a helicopter circled the site and hovered over the gorge. The DEC boat carrying Blake’s body in a litter moved into open water and began working its way upstream. As the chopper crew winched the basket up, the blue and gold state police craft, buffeted by cross winds, shuddered. Blake’s body grazed the top of a spruce, swayed unsteadily for several seconds, then disappeared into the helicopter’s open side door.
Reed’s boat worked its way back downstream toward Marshall’s group.
“What are they going to do with the body?” Carlyle said.
“He’ll go to Glens Falls for the autopsy.” Reed turned to Marshall. “We’ll meet you at the inn at five. Have your guides there. And get all your papers in order.”
“What papers?”
“Your operator’s license, insurance documents, training records, and Red Cross certificates. Everything that supports your outfitter application.”
Marshall said, “What’s going on?”
“Ryan, you’ve lost two people this week. You can’t expect us to ignore that.”
“Am I going to lose my license?”
“Just do what Carlyle says.”
“For Christ’s sake. I can get my people back to North River.”
“If you run everything by Carlyle, you’ve got no problem.”
As soon as Marshall and his guides returned to their boats, Carlyle spoke to Blake’s crew. “We don’t know how this happened. But please, don’t ask us to talk about it now. We’ll have you off the river in three hours.”
A young woman, her hands shaking, said, “Just get us out of here, please.”
Carlyle said, “One more thing. DEC and the state police are going to conduct an investigation. If they contact you, tell them everything you remember about the trip, Blake’s behavior most of all.”
“What should we say?”
“That’s up to you. A young guide just died a half-hour ago. I need you to help us understand why that happened.”
By the time Marshall’s five boats approached North River at three that afternoon, the sun had disappeared behind Black Mountain. It was forty-nine degrees, and a fifteen-mile-an-hour wind was whipping up whitecaps on the Hudson.
Marshall’s stunned clients had said little that afternoon. When they reached the beach, they dropped their gear and walked silently up to a waiting bus.
Guides and outfitters from other companies, Marshall’s staff, and the media, some fifty people in all, stood in silence on a slight rise overlooking the take-out. Alan Metzger, a reporter from a local paper, shoved a microphone toward Betts’s face. “Can you tell us how he died?”
“If you don’t get that thing away from me, I’m going to give you a colonoscopy with that mic.”
Saying nothing, Carlyle marched past the line of microphones and cameras.
Wearing waterproof boots, a yellow backcountry shell over a pile jacket, and fingerless gloves, Karen Raines was waiting for him near the road. She had a BlackBerry in her left hand. “How the hell did that happen?”
He told her about the accident and his attempt to examine the site. “It’s the craziest thing I’ve even seen.”
“Have you ever heard of two fatalities so close together?”
“Never.”
“There’s going to be an inquiry.”
“I’ll be glad to tell them what I saw.”
“We don’t just want your testimony. We want you to lead the investigation.”
“Why me?”
“The university says you’re this hotshot criminologist. Were they wrong?”
“I’m not a crime-scene investigator. I study the history of crime.”
“You were a guide on this river for a decade; you understand this world.”
“The state police will be furious if they’re not in charge.”
“Let me worry about them.”
“I told you, I’m no cop.”
“We’re not looking for a cop. We just need time to decide how to handle all the bad publicity that’s coming our way.”
“I get it. You’re going to sweep this thing under the rug.”
“Of course not. DEC wants this problem cleared up so we can get people back on that river.”
“If you put me in charge of this thing, I won’t stop until I find out what happened out there.”
“That’s fine. Just be at Marshall’s lodge at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. We’ll have your witnesses ready.”
Carlyle climbed onto the bus and walked to the back to give himself time to think.
Betts dropped into the seat next to him. “You even see anything like those jackals with cameras?”
“Try to stay calm,” Carlyle said. “The shit’s just beginning for all of us.”
At seven that night, when he was sure that no other boats would come down the river, he emerged from the woods. He kicked leaves away from the site and, gripping the long wooden pole in both hands, pried the log into the Indian. He stood there for several minutes to make sure the current carried it clear of the chute. Because it was too late to hike back to the road, he would camp out tonight and return to his truck before dawn, long before the main road would see any traffic.
Three
The five guides who were on the river when Blake died went their own way after being interviewed by the state police. Betts, Nash, and Hernandez went home to their families and drank beer until they fell asleep. Eric Munck picked up a woman in a bar and stayed with her until four in the morning. Carlyle ate in a restaurant in Warrensburg, then found a room in the lodge. Marshall slept on the couch in his office. When they all got back to Marshall’s place on Thursday morning at eight thirty, they found Karen Raines, John Bognor, the county sheriff, and Leo Wells, head of Search and Rescue for the region, waiting for them.
Marshall’s lodge sat on a forty-six-acre property surrounded by blue spruce, birch, maple, and flowering crabapple. The main building was a replica of the place Cornelius Vanderbilt had erected a hundred miles north of here a century ago. Sheathed in old-growth cedar, it contained a two-thousand-square-foot conference center, a dining room that could seat fifty
, two offices, a guides’ lounge, and, around back, a retail shop that sold whitewater gear.
Marshall’s father, convinced that it would showcase his plans for the Johnston Mountain Project, had shelled out nearly half a million dollars for the lodge alone. The main room downstairs had a handcrafted stone fireplace, ten-foot mullioned windows, brocade wing chairs, walnut end tables, and oak beams framing a vaulted ceiling.
Each bedroom on the second floor contained a four-poster canopy bed, imitation Tiffany lamps, ship models, bentwood rockers, pack baskets, carvings of owls and loons, and original—if not especially charming—landscape paintings.
Raines opened her purse and took out a BlackBerry and a large manila file. “I just spoke to the commissioner. He wants people back on the river this weekend. If they’re not with Marshall, he wants them with another outfitter.”
Carlyle sat at the head of the table in the main room downstairs. “There’s something else we have to talk about first. The families of these two guides deserve to know why they died.”
“The commissioner has another priority: ending the bad publicity and pumping tourist dollars into this region.”
“There’s a half-dozen fatalities in this county every year,” Marshall said. “Why are you laying the blame for these tragedies on me?”
Sheriff Bognor turned in his chair to face Raines. “Karen, Blake’s parents have hired a lawyer. You can’t ignore the families.”
Bognor, age fifty-six, was wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, and scuffed work boots. When asked why he never wore a uniform, he’d said, “I didn’t get elected to this job because I look like Smokey the Bear.”
“Let’s get this investigation over with,” Marshall said. “I’ve got a business to run.”
All this talk of profit and loss appalled Carlyle. “DEC will need some reassurance that your people did everything they could to save Blake.”
“You can’t put the blame for what happened on my crew.”
“I’m just trying to make sure this never happens again.”
The Gorge Page 3